C onservation 
ine Form 

or 

1 he SuDstance: 
Whick? 



By 
WILSON COMPTON 



Bureau oi Economica 

NATIONAL LUMBER MANUFACTURERS 

ASSOCIATION 



Published by 

National Lumber Manufacturers Association 

1] South La Salle Street, Chicago, 111. 



November, 1919 



C ons ervation 
Xke Form 



or 



1 he Substance 

Wkick? 



By 

WILSON COMPTON 



/" Bureau of Economics ' 

NATIONAL LUMBER MANUFACTURERS 

ASSOCIATION 






QXft 
Author 



Conservation: The Form or 
the Substance: Which? 



A little less than fifty years ago in the United 
States Senate it was announced that within forty 
years we would have no more great forests. It 
was a time when the effects of the ill-advised and 
worse-enforced general land laws were having in- 
creasing public attention. The timber situation as 
described by the Senator of course required 
prompt consideration. So for some years Sen- 
ators and Congressmen endeavored to save the 
forests by making speeches about conservation. 
Then Congress created a Division of Forestry to 
find out what was becoming of the trees and to 
ascertain, if possible, how the nation might be 
protected from a timber shortage. 

Today the Forest Service, its successor, is the Extent 
administrator of 155,000,000 acres of National ""Jj!^^^ 
forests, upon which there is still standing more qj this 
timber than the alarm of the Senator nearly 50 Country 
years ago had led him to think there was then in 
the entire United States. In addition, there are Mil- 
itary and Indian reservations. National Parks and 
State forests, small in size, and more than four 
times as much merchantable stumpage in private 
holdings as stands in the whole of the National 
Forests. But the gaunt spectre of the "timber 
famine" still stalks, — in the newspapers. 

It is an incontrovertible fact that we are today, 
and heretofore always have been, using up our for- 



Conservation: The Form 



ests more rapidly than they are being replaced by 
regrowth. It goes without saying that eventually 
the volume of timber used will diminish or the 
volume added by growth will increase. But that 
statement, axiomatic as it is, is far from giving a 
formula for the device of a National plan for for- 
est conservation and replacement. When stand- 
ing timber was plentiful and cheap, and industrial 
development in its infancy, wood and its products 
were, of course, freely used. In many parts of the 
United States the annual per capita utilization of 
lumber and timbers, poles and posts, not including 
firewood, was equivalent to more than 2,500 board 
feet. Even today in frontier regions the per cap- 
ita quantity of lumber used annually exceeds 
1,500 feet and in some entire States exceeds 1,000 
feet. But for the United States as a whole it is 
approximately 320 feet; as against more than 500 
feet in the United States less than fifteen years ago 
and about 100 feet in England, 90 feet in France 
and 150 feet in Germany immediately prior to the 
outbreak of the war. 
Changing This nation is passing through the same evolu- 
Lumber ^.j^jj ^f changing lumber requirements that has 
ments been experienced by other countries. Despite 
growth in population the total annual consumption 
of lumber in the United States is only approxi- 
mately 33,000,000,000 feet as against more than 
45,000,000,000 feet in 1906. It has been declin- 
ing for fifteen years. 



or the Substance: Which? 



Fifty years ago pioneer farmers in southern 
Ohio were having neighborhood "log rollings" at 
which they burned hundreds of millions of feet of 
fine black walnut trees for the like of which the 
War Department during the war literally scoured 
the country, in order that adequate material for 
propellors and gunstocks might be secured. The 
heavy hewn beams of old barns in the Ohio Valley 
are of wood that now makes kings' table tops and 
old granary doors are taken off to make fine fur- 
niture. 

This does not necessarily mean a waste of 
national resources. To the early pioneer trees 
were an encumbrance to the soil which he desired 
to till. Agricultural development has usually pre- 
ceded industrial expansion, which is a higher 
stage of economic development. Had the natural 
forest growth on American soil, or any consider- 
able part of it, been either preserved or promptly 
replaced by new growth it is not likely that steel 
works, packing houses, refineries, factories and 
mills would now be studding those lands which 
once were in timber. Nations, like individuals, 
can not "eat their cake and have it, too." 

If this means anything it means that the national 
need for forests and for their products is relative 
— relative, that is, to the national need for all 
other products that could be secured from the same 
land, by the expenditure of the same amount of 
capital and labor as would otherwise be devoted 



Conservation: The Form 



to the growing of trees and to the manufacture 
of wood products. It is not good national econ- 
omy to have forests for the sake of having a lot 
of trees. Plans for permanent forestation which 
in fact, whether intentionally or not, ignore the 
inter-relations of all economic and industrial needs 
are not wise. The recent and deplorable forest 
fires in the West have given added evidence of the 
need of a national forest policy, but such evidence 
tends to focus public attention upon the obvious 
fact of the diminution of the supply and to divert 
attention from the less obvious but not less signifi- 
cant fact that not so large a supply as heretofore 
may be needed — in the interest of greatest national 
wealth and welfare. 

Conser- Abundance and variety of natural resources 

vation have constituted, perhaps, America's strongest 

National ^^^^^^ claim to industrial and commercial pros- 

Life In- perity. Waste of natural resoiurceg is national 

surance foUy. Conservation of natural resources is a sort 

of national life insurance, a guarantee of national 

life and prosperity. But conservation may not 

wisely protect or replace one resource at the 

sacrifice of a wasteful use of another resource 

which is more important, or of human labor, 

which is the most valuable of all. 

"Conservation" has for a generation been a by- 
word in industrial circles, among civic reformers 
and in the lingo of politicians. It slips smoothly 
from the tongue. It is in turn, mouthed, gnawed 



or the Substance: Which? 



and gulped. Like the word "efficiency" it has been 
said by so many different people to mean so many 
different things that it has become either gospel 
or slang; gospel to those who believe that any- 
thing that is called conservation, is; slang to those 
who don't. Fortunately for the future of our 
natural resources and our language, in both of 
which we have pride, conservation is a matter of 
fact and not of name. "Conservation" which ha^ 
the form but not the substance is not conservation, 
but waste. 

It is generally understood that forests, in addi- 
tion to providing raw material for the manufac- 
ture of commodities universally used, have a 
relation, perhaps not at all remote, to the control 
of water flow and hence to soil fertility: to the 
pleasures and recreations of the people and even, 
it is often asserted, to climatic conditions and pub- 
lic health. When one speaks of forest conserva- 
tion, however, thought is usually addressed to the 
industrial uses of timber in the manufacture of 
lumber, pulp, paper and the miscellaneous prod- 
ucts of wood-using industries. The adequate fu- 
ture supply of these commodities is the chief 
concern of the conservationist. 

Today anew the people of America are being 
reproached for the ill-advised and worse-enforced 
general public land policy of years ago which 
alienated from the public domain nearly four- 
fifths of the original timber standing in the United 



8 Conservation: The Form 

States. With that reproach there are being vig- 
orously advocated throughout the land active re- 
medial measures looking to a national policy of 
public and private forestation. What has been 
done can not be undone. The timber lands sepa- 
rated from the public domain can not be promptly 
returned. But a wise and timely forest policy may 
offer a partial remedy for possible future effects 
of what may have been an old public indiscretion 
and such policy deserves the approval of all those 
who desire the perpetuation of American industrial 
institutions. The greater therefore is the need that 
fact and principle shall, in the determination of 
public policy, prevail over opinion and fad. 

Present The forests of the United States today hold be- 
^T^her ^^^^^ 2,500,000,000,000 and 3,000,000,000,000 
feet of merchantable standing timber, to which is 
being added each year nearly 20,000,000,000 feet 
by natural replacement. The timber now stand- 
ing would, if cut into lumber, be sufficient to make 
a plank road four miles wide around the earth at 
the equator. The timber added each year by new 
growth would supply material for a 40-foot road 
reaching from the earth to the moon. 

Nearly three-fifths of all the timber now stand- 
ing is in the Mountain States of the far West. The 
forests of northern pine, in the lake region, once 
thought almost inexhaustible, have well nigh dis- 
appeared and the end of the timber supply in 
many parts of the South is in sight. In parts of 



or the Substance: Which? 



New England and of the south Atlantic States mills 
are cutting second and even third-growth timber, 
and growth of new timber is overtaking the re- 
moval by the saw. Assuming the present rates of 
consumption of merchantable saw timber and its 
replacement by new growth, there is today in the 
United States as a whole a reserve of standing tim- 
ber adequate to secure more than 150 years' sup- 
ply. This is exclusive of forest uses for other pur- 
poses than manufacture into lumber which are 
not dependent upon the size and quality necessary 
for saw logs. It is inaccurate to compute the sup- 
ply of stump age available for future use by divid- 
ing the total quantity now standing by the annual 
cut, for the same reason that, for a country self- 
supported by its own timber and practicing rigid 
forestry on a 100-year period of rotation, it would 
be inaccurate to say that it had a timber supply 
adequate for only fifty years ahead. Such calcu- 
lation of the forest resources of this country would 
indicate that, if present rate of use continues, the 
United States will be out of saw timber in less 
than 75 years — ^which is not true. 

Fourteen Points to Consider 

In the voluminous published statements on for- Question 

est conservation during the last few years there ^<>t of 

have been many points upon which all participants i,^*^^T^ 

have agreed. But not a little of the discussion has National 

been sentimental. Occasionally, too, opinions have Economy 



10 Conservation: The Form 

been made public purporting to represent the 
views or the temperament of a large group, or of 
an entire profession, which that group or profes- 
sion as a whole has repudiated. Since the matter 
in question is one essentially not of forestry as 
such but of national economy, perhaps the most 
constructive help I can render as a lawyer and an 
economist toward clearing away the haze that has 
long enveloped this discussion is, by avoiding opin- 
ion, to state the facts as they have been demon- 
strated in the experience of this country and of 
other countries which have gone through the same 
cycle of agricultural, commercial and industrial de- 
velopment. The experience of nations and of in- 
dustry and commerce is the most reliable criterion 
of what will best promote national wealth and wel- 
fare and industrial prosperity. 

The following statements of principles must ob- 
viously be brief. I am confident, however, that I 
may rely upon the highmindedness of the reader 
to interpret them in the light of reason and in the 
light of facts which he knows to be matters of com- 
mon knowledge. Thus may they contribute to 
clear thinking and straight thinking on national 
economic policy. 

1. There are already local shortages of stand- 
ing timber and there will be more. But there is no 
local shortage of lumber, except that temporary 
shortage which is occasionally caused by the swing 
of market conditions. Lumber supplies formerly 



or the Substance: Which? 11 

cut from neighboring forests are being secured 
from points more and more distant. But the re- 
moval of the original forests from the soil of the 
United States without provision for forest renewal 
on much of the land thus cleared is not necessarily 
a public misfortune. 

The scarcity that is most impressive nowadays Forest Dis- 
is not the scarcity of trees but the scarcity of trees tribution 
near to the centers of lumber consumption. But Present 
although impressive it is not conclusive. As is rec- Day 
ognized generally by both foresters and lumber- 
men, classification of lands for all the various uses 
to which they may be devoted is essential to the de- 
termination of the particular use to which any 
given tract may be most economically devoted. It 
is not beyond probability that a comprehensive 
survey of the needs of the forest industries, in the 
light of the public need for other products of the 
soil, may show that the welfare of the nation will 
best be subserved if the permanent commercial 
timber stands are confined substantially to the 
mountainous country of the far West, the Appal- 
achian and White Mountain region, the sandy 
plains of the Lake region and rough country in the 
South and elsewhere. It is not inherently neces- 
sary, for example, that Minnesota have its own 
forests, any more than that North Dakota have its 
own, provided it has access on reasonable terms to 
the products of the forests standing elsewhere in 
the United States. 



12 Conservation: The Form 



It might be exceedingly wasteful to maintain 
permanently under forest more than a small pro- 
portion of the cvit-over flat southern pine lands. 
Certainly the ambitious South would resent an ef- 
fort to maintain permanently its status as an in- 
dustrial frontier, such substantially as it has been 
heretofore. There is neither public virtue nor 
truth in the slogan that: Where a tree is cut an- 
other tree should be grown. Such a policy, pur- 
sued throughout the land, would entail great waste 
in the use of the nation's resources. It is the 
thoughtless assertion of those who believe that na- 
ture left unaided and undisturbed should be the 
universal regulator of the economic life of man^ 
kind, or that we should preserve or replace all our 
forests so that we might always have a lot of trees. 

There is much land in the South which so scan- 
tily rewards the cultivation of its soil that no 
other use of it can be reasonably expected to be as 
profitable as forestation. Estimates of the propor- 
tion of cut-over southern pine lands available, ac- 
cording to present standards, for agricultural or 
stock raising, range between 50 percent and 95 
percent. The facts, whatever they are, will in the 
long run prevail; the sooner therefore the relative 
capacities of southern lands are ascertained the 
more intelligent will be a plan of forestation based 
thereon, and more promising of permanence. 

2. Possession of cheap and plentiful standing 



or the Substance: Which? 13 

timber is not necessarily a symptom of national 
wealth. 

The great forests of virgin timber like all other 
natural resources have, it is true, in the develop- 
ment of this country added greatly to national 
wealth. But a permanent forest policy that would 
perpetuate the original quantity of merchantable 
timber, or any considerable proportion of it, 
might, and probably would, involve a national 
waste through employing soil, capital and labor 
for a less profitable use when a more profit- 
able use was available. Low prices for forest 
products at the expense of relative scarcity and 
high prices for other commodities is not safe pub- 
lic economy. Emphasis is added to this fact by 
the present relative scarcity of labor, prevalent 
throughout much of the world. 

3. The virtual disappearance of certain species 
of timber is not under all conditions detrimental 
to the public welfare. 

For commercial purposes many species are read- Inter- 

ily interchangeable, but vary sreatly in rate of ^^«/f^^- 

1 T^ . n 1 , . 1 abdity 

growth, rractically the same things, now made of Com- 

from a hundred or more recognized commercial mercial 
species, could be made from a dozen different 
species well selected for permanent growth and the 
same uses and comforts derived therefrom. Where 
there is substantial similarity in physical qualities 
and virtual equality in fitness for given commer- 
cial uses, those species should be perpetuated which 
can be grown to commercially useful size in the 



14 Conservation: The Form 

shortest time, at the lowest cost. The elimination 
from commerce of certain species, provided ade- 
quate substitutes are preserved, would involve 
therefore no necessary impairment of public 
wealth. Inconvenience to wood-using industries 
would of course result. Readjustment of indus- 
trial processes is inevitable but readjustment itself 
does not mean waste, or loss. 

4. The cutting down of old trees faster than 
new trees are growing up does not of itself signify 
public loss. 

The changing lumber requirements incident to 
the development of new standards of construction 
and the substitution of other materials formerly 
but little used, are features of the industrial evolu- 
tion which this country has been experiencing. A 
relative lessening of the demand for lumber has 
characterized the same stage in the industrial de- 
velopment of other countries. The decline in lum- 
ber production because of increasing scarcity of 
its raw material, the consequent shifting of de- 
mand and the increase in prices of lumber, are 
facts which everyone can observe. But again such 
readjustment in itself does not signify public mis- 
fortune. It may be, and in the past frequently 
has been, the means of diverting into more profit- 
able channels of enterprise than could be offered 
by forest industries, some of the productive ener- 
gies of the nation. 



or the Substance: Which? 15 



5. Not only is it not necessarily, but it is not Disadvan- 
even probably true, that all the lands in the United J^^^ ^/ 
States locally determined to be better suited for State 
growing trees than for growing anything else. Forest 



should be used for growing trees. 

To use an extreme contrast: If 95 percent of 
the land of the United States were thus determined 
to be better suited for pasture land than for any 
other purpose, would 95 percent wisely be used 
for that purpose and we become a nation of herds- 
men? Or if 60 percent of the area of this country 
were thus better suited for growing trees than for 
agriculture or stock raising, would 60 percent 
wisely be so used and the United States then have 
lumber enough to house five times the number of 
people it could feed? International exchange of 
commodities would considerably influence, but it 
would not be adequate to determine the character 
of our agriculture and our industry. The most 
effective distribution of the productive energies of 
the nation depends not upon the demand for any 
one product considered by itself but upon the rela- 
tive public demand for all products considered to- 
gether. The fact that nature covered with trees 
nearly two-thirds of the land surface of this coun- 
try does not mean that such condition could wisely 
be made permanent. The forest needs of every 
locality can be wisely determined only in relation 
to the forest needs of the nation as a whole and in 
relation to its total timber supply. 



Policies 



16 Conservation: The Form 

6. The disappearance of forest industries in 
certain regions because of exhaustion of nearby 
timber supplies has not always been either a local 
or national misfortune. 

Clearing of the land has frequently paved the 
way for industrial and agricultural expansion 
which has produced greater wealth than did the 
forest industries in their prime; witness, for ex- 
ample, the central States. It would be a waste of 
labor — as well as of capital — to attempt to con- 
tinue an industrial enterprise under conditions 
which would have returned as the result of a day's 
labor a product worth only $1,000, when the same 
labor — and the same amount of capital — under 
more favorable available conditions of employ- 
ment would have returned a product worth, say 
$2,000. Such, however, would have been the in- 
evitable fortune of an effort, in many regions of 
the United States, to make timber properties and 
lumber manufacturing enterprises self-perpetuat- 
ing. The gradual let-up of lumber industrial ac- 
tivity in certain regions or States may be, and 
doubtless is, an annoyance to local or State pride; 
but pride does not — and should not — ^prevail 
against economic advantage. 

Economic 7. Economically the original timber in the 

Nature of jjYiited States is in large part a '^mine" and not a 

Original ^^ „ 

Timber c^'^P- 



or the Substance: Which? 17 

It is a vital part of the function of a comprehen- 
sive forest policy to determine which part should 
be treated as a "mine" and which as a "crop." 

The business of lumber manufacture is no more 
the business of growing trees than the business of 
flom: milling is the business of growing wheat. 
Men who buy timber and operate sawmills are for- 
esters only in the sense in which persons who buy 
coal lands and operate mines are geologists. The 
business of the lumber manufacturer is to make 
boards out of trees, and if he does that well he is 
performing the best public service that his indus- 
try can render. 

It ds not the business of the lumber manufac- 
turer to make more trees out of which someone 
else some day may make more boards. By fortui- 
tous circumstance he usually is an owner of cut* 
over land, some or all of which may have greatest 
ultimate usefulness in reforestation. But the mere 
ownership of potential forest land no more puts 
the owner under obligation — moral, social or legal 
— to undertake the growing of trees when to do so 
would be unprofitable, than the ownership of po- 
tential farm lands obliges the owner thereof to 
raise farm crops when he could do so only at a 
loss. 

If the growing of timber is an appropriate priv- 
ate enterprise — ^which I doubt — provided it is well 
informed, the interest of the public in the main- 
tenance of public timber supplies will find expres- 



18 Conservation: The Form 

sion in some form which will make profitable priv- 
ate enterprise in growing timber. If it is not an 
appropriate private enterprise the sooner adequate 
provision is made for doing it as a public enter- 
prise the better, and energy directed toward get- 
ting action out of the public would secure the more 
permanent reward. Under such conditions public 
agencies would experience no difficulty in acquir- 
ing from present owners upon reasonable terms 
the lands appropriate for permanent use in refor- 
estation. Public indifference and inactivity may 
not, however, encumber the private owner of tim- 
ber lands with the responsibility for, or expense of, 
doing something which the public should do, but 
does not. 

8. Local shrinkage of employment for labor, 
caused by vanishing forest industries in certain 
regions, has been by no means an unmixed evil for 
labor. 

Employment at higher wages has usually in the 
past been secured by removal to similar industries 
in other regions, or to other industries in the same 
region or to farming enterprises on the land 
cleared by the lumbering operation. Higher prices 
for the products of the forest in all their various 
forms, resulting from the increasing scarcity of 
raw material, have made possible the payment of 
higher wages. In this the experience of the lum- 
ber industry has been but the counterpart of the 
similar experience of other industries based on 



or the Substance: Which? 19 

natural resources. Occasional partial dislocation 
of labor is the inevitable accompaniment of the 
effort of modern industrial society so to apportion 
its productive energies as to secure the maximum 
net increase in national wealth. 

Such readjustment of employment, far from 
contributing to "hobo-ism," as has occasionally 
been intimated, has contributed substantially to 
the maintenance of the relatively high standard of 
living of the wage-earning groups in this country. 

9. Idleness of some of the cut-over timber lands Use of 
is the temporary result to be expected of clearing ^^'^^^^ 
the forests from lands upon which maintenance lands 

of permanent forest growth would be poor public 
economy, because involving relatively wasteful use 
of the soil. 

Agriculture, stock raising or other uses will 
eventually absorb these lands. 

10. Idleness of other of the cut-over timber 
lands is the inevitable result of clearing the forest 
from lands upon which regrowing of a new forest 
would be poor private economy. 

If the public welfare requires that lands be re- 
forested which enlightened self interest — which is 
the essential driving force of all business and in- 
dustry — does not induce the private owner to re- 
forest, the public should itself engage in reforesta- 
tion of lands appropriate therefor. Even today, 
however, it is not improbable that greater enlight- 



20 Conservation: The Form 

enment of some owners of cut-over timber lands 
would induce them, out of plain self interest to 
foster on their own now idle lands reforestation 
by natural replacement, encouraged by protection 
against fire and ravage. 

11. The owner of private property in timber 
lands, legally acquired, is under no different or 
greater public obligation permanently to use his 
land to grow timber than the obligation of the 
owner of agricultural land to use his land to grow 
crops if the growing of such crops is unprofitable. 

The public need for food is at least no less than 
the need for lumber. The apportionment among 
their alternative uses of the productive facilities 
and energies of the nation, can be wisely deter- 
mined only in the light of the entire national 
economic situation. Lands in rocky hillsides in 
distant New England are scratched into agricul- 
tural productivity, which are of a quality that 
would be barely sniffed at in the more fertile re- 
gions of the central West. 

12. The legal obligation upon the owner of 
property — an obligation that is universal and 
should be enforced — so to use it as to do no dam- 
age to another^ s property and to do no public in- 
jury does not include an additional obligation to 
make a specific positive use of it which, although 
intended to benefit the public at large, involves a 
loss to the individual himself. 



or the Substance: Which? 21 

-> 

Failure of private enterprise to reforest cut-over Private 

lands is not to do a public injury. On the con- R^fores- 

p . . 1 . tatiofi 

trary, private reiorestation enterprise today m Enterprise 

most regions of the United States would entail 

public loss because it would involve a relatively 

wasteful use of the nation's resources. Public 

reforestation enterprise might, however, be much 

less wasteful, viewed by the standards, according 

to which private enterprises are judged. In final 

analysis national wealth and public welfare are 

not distinguishable from the wealth and welfare 

of the individuals who constitute the nation. The 

whole is neither more nor less than the sum of its 

parts. 

13. // the public is interested in a specific 
positive use of timber lands or of cut-over lands 
different from that to which enlightened self-inter- 
est may lead the owner thereof, the public which 
is the beneficiary should bear the additional ex- 
pense of establishing such use — not some of the 
additional expense but all. 

A single class of private property may not be 
singled out to sustain a burden in behalf of the 
public as a whole, which is not imposed upon other 
classes of private property. To do so would not 
only be violative of the right of private property 
upon the preservation and protection of which 
depends the maintenance of our national social 
and industrial institutions. It would likewise dis- 



22 Conservation: The Form 

courage enterprise and would seriously impair the 
efficiency of the particular industry thus singled 
out. An intended public service might thus easily 
be converted into a public loss. 

14. The maintenance in idleness of cut-over 
land has been frequently declared to be wasteful. 

The larger truth would seem to be that it is 
wasteful to maintain cut-over land in such state of 
idleness as does not furnish reasonable safeguard 
against the fire and ravage which destroys the nat- 
ural reproduction of desirable species upon lands 
appropriate for permanent forestation. Nature, in 
the long run, unaided by human effort, would, if 
given the opportunity, itself solve much of the 
problem of providing forests for distant future use. 

The idleness itself of logged-off lands is not al- 
ways wasteful. In many instances the expenditure 
of labor upon such land to return it to productive 
uses is still more wasteful because it withdraws 
from other fields to which it could have been more 
profitably devoted, the labor, already scarce 
enough, and other facilities thus expended. Tim- 
ber and forest economics can not be dissociated 
from the intricate and ever changing economic re- 
lations of all industry. But it would seem safe to 
assume that protection against fire and ravage 
made universal and uniform among all timber 
properties, so as to involve no inequality of burden 
among competitors, will be adequate to guarantee. 



or the Substance: Which? 23 

by natural replacement, the future of the timber 
supply at least till such time as the permanent 
forest needs of the United States, and the most eco- 
nomical way of supplying those needs, can be made 
more apparent. 

Such a program might properly be called one of Program 
Forest Protection and Natural Replacement. Sure- Protection 
ly there would be wisdom in devising adequate and Nat- 
means for protecting what we have, before devot- "J** ^^^^ 
ing our chief energies to securing more when we 
do not yet know how to keep what we've got. A 
man with a sack of potatoes with a hole in it usu- 
ally tries to keep the sack full not by putting more 
potatoes into it but by patching the hole. 

A uniform national policy of forest protection 
and of acquisition by the public of cut-over lands 
appropriate for permanent forestation shoidd be 
adequate and practicable, supplemented by such 
private forestation enterprise as well-informed 
self-interest may induce. But the duty of the pub- 
lic should not be confused with the public obliga- 
tion of private industry. The specific public obli- 
gation of the lumber industry is to do well its task 
of making and selling boards. Along with all oth- 
ers in the nation it shares in the obligation to pro- 
vide adequate forests for future generations. But 
this is an obligation common to all Americans and 
not exclusive upon a single industry or upon a 
single class of property. Provision for the needs 



24 Conservation: The Form or the Substance: Which? 

of the industry of tomorrow will not wisely impair 
the vitality of the industry of today, lest in the pur- 
suit of conservation it undermine the very instru- 
mentalities which may convert into the things of 
public use and comfort the resources thus con- 
served. Conservation at such sacrifice is the form 
without the substance. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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000 921 476 8 




